(AN: Hello, Vault-Boys and Vault-Girls, to my first ever Fallout fic! I've decided to try my hand out on something else that I've been enjoying quite a bit of lately and tell my version of the Fallout 4 story. All characters, names, and things belong to Bethesda and Todd "it just works" Howard.)

(Unlike my Skyrim series which started with The Dragonborn and the Lioness, I'm a tad more versed in Fallout lore [having done some measure of research prior to setting this down]. The purpose of this story, aside from doing something fun to continue to exercise my writing skills, is to explore several theories and speculations of my own, not only with the narrative of Fallout and its characters but with the post-civilization world. It will be a genuine speculative story: a hard science fiction fic wrapped in a shiny V.A.U.L.T.-Tech wrapper!)

(For the sake of not slogging through the intro [as well as -spoilers!-], I'm dispensing with the pre-War beginning scene. We'll learn about our hero's life through his interactions with the characters. Now let us begin!)

The End of the World

A blinding light. It reminded him of the flash of the bomb, that fateful morning in 2077. Even as the lift was rising up from the bowels of the earth, Nathan Hall's mind was reeling. It all happened so fast. A lazy morning in mid-October, the salesman, Nora and Shaun, and then the sirens. He had snapped into action: his time in the 108th had trained him for that. Then they went underground, into Vault 111 - good thing he'd let the salesman in when he did: the next thing he knew, some bald-headed asshole had shot Nora and Shaun was gone, then he was waking up freezing cold in an abandoned vault with nothing but some cockroaches the size of cats for company. With the help of the Pip-Boy, the personal computer mounted on his left arm like an oversized bracelet, Nathan had managed to escape the Vault and had now returned to the surface.

But once his eyes became accustomed to the light of the sun, what greeted him was a grim sight. What had once been a full and vibrant forest of green trees was now a sea of skeletons, hanging nakedly in the wind. The grass was brown and dry, and there wasn't much to see as far as civilization for miles in any direction. Even the skies seemed bare and empty, with not a cloud to be seen.

In any case, Nathan decided that he had to look for the bald-headed man who had killed Nora. He didn't have a clue where to start, or even a name drop off at the post-office. All he had going for him was the promise he had made over his wife's corpse in the Vault when he woke up: that he would find the one who killed her and get back their infant son Shaun. It was the only thing that drove him now, that pushed him forward, that made him move. He stepped off the platform that led into the Vault and began making his way down the hill. He followed the path that he and Nora had made when they passed this way to enter the Vault. The dried up leaves of grass and stunted brown bushes were unsettling, as though something or someone was waiting inside them to attack him. This feeling was not abated by the presence of bones on the ground before him: human bones. Though they had been picked clean God knows how long ago, they still wore the tattered remains of their clothes.

Nathan recognized their clothes. These were employees of Vault-Tec, the company that made the Vaults. Had they been out here when the bombs fell? He had read things on the terminals in Vault 111 when he woke up, trying to find some way to open the Vault or at least a clue to who had stolen Shaun. These things weren't at all very good: apparently Vault-Tec had been using them as guinea pigs for some sort of twisted lab experiment involving cryogenics. What it all meant he couldn't wrap his head around, but the other things that appeared on those terminals sent chills up his spine.

Down the hill he went, until he came to the shores of what he took to be Dakins Brook. Well, it had been Dakins Brook in his day, but now it was much lower and the bridge and fallen down. In stark contrast to the dull, brown, and dirty ground around it, the water looked clear and clean-looking: quite deceptively so, if his grade school training about atomic poisoning could be trusted more than Vault-Tec. At any rate, he wasn't thirsty and had no desire to wade through it. Following the broken foot-bridge he used on his way up here, he crossed the brook and continued on his way. The woods he walked through were bare and leafless: like winter in the south. There wasn't much as far as anywhere to hide; not that Nathan had much concern for what could be out there. After all, nothing could survive an atomic explosion - except cockroaches, obviously. What was there to fear?

As Nathan walked, he examined the Pip-Boy on his arm. It still had some power: from the television advertisements, he heard that they were powered by an atomic battery that could last upwards of several centuries. Turning one of the knobs, he got a full body readout for his vital signs: heart-rate was within acceptable limits, pulse was normal, body temperature optimal, and no signs of radiation. One of the dials on the side of the main-screen showed the built-in Geiger-counter: the needle was at 0 rads and no clicking could be heard. On the front end of the device, near his hand, was a button which said below it "Activate V.A.T.S." Clicking it produced a tiny green beam from the Pip-Boy, like a laser ray from the Jangles the Moon Monkey cartoon serials: the read-out on the main screen went blank, no matter which way he pointed it. Didn't seem to be harmful.

But fiddling with the Pip-Boy would have to wait for another time. Before him he could see, brown and twisted, the shrubs that served as the back hedge of Sanctuary Hills. Sometime in the mid 2040s, the place had been turned from a museum into a residential subdivision: the statue of the Minuteman, the monument to the American Revolution, had been moved to the eastern side of the Old North Bridge to allow for more room for houses. Who the asshole was do made that decision, Nathan didn't know: he was just born at the time, and that was the world he lived in. Lived in. For that world was gone, and there was no one left who would even remember the Minutemen, the American Revolution, or the 'Shot Heard Round the World.'

As Nathan approached the path that led to the Old North Bridge, the 'scenic route' out of Sanctuary, he heard a familiar sound: a General Atomics repulsor engine active. He knew that sound, for it was heard frequently in his house before everything happened. He looked this way and that, looking for the source of the sound. To his surprise, he found the source. Two houses down from where he had emerged, he saw his house: the House of Tomorrow, the realtor had called it. Hovering about it just outside was a squid-looking robot hovering a foot or two off the ground, with three mechanical arms and its three eye-sockets looking down at the yard. Only it didn't look quite so shiny as it had before: there were dings, stains, and scrapes on its chrome-plated chassis, the joints on the arms looked old, and in places the finish was coming off.

"Codsworth?" Nathan asked.

The robot turned its body about towards the sound of Nathan's voice. Its rounded photoreceptors gently lurched forward on their spindly stalks. Then, from an unseen mouth, came the sound of a surprisingly very relieved British butler.

"As I live and breathe!" the robot exclaimed. "Ah, sir! It's...it's really you!"

Nathan was surprised to hear the robot's voice. Not that he didn't know Mr. Handys could communicate in such a way, but that his guess was correct. Could it be that someone from his old home survived?

"You...you're still here..." Nathan muttered aloud, still amazed.

"Well, of course I'm still here!" the robot proudly exclaimed. "Surely you didn't think a little radiation could deter the pride of General Atomics International? But you seem the worse for wear. Best not let the missus see you in that state, hmm? Where is your better half, by the by?"

Nathan froze for a moment. Hearing Codsworth talking so nonchalantly about Nora, as if it was discussing today's weather or reading off the temperature of his morning coffee, seemed...wrong somehow. Especially after what he had seen firsthand. Now it was coming back to him. Waking up inside that damned ice-box, the bald man in the leather coat, the woman in white; they tried to take Shaun from her. She refused. And then the gunshot.

"Sir?"

"She's dead, Codsworth," Nathan grimly answered. "Some men in white coats came...and they killed her..."

"Oh dear, sir," the robot sympathetically murmured. "These things you're saying...these terrible things...I-I believe you need a distraction. Yes! A distraction to calm this...this dire mood. It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. May I suggest checkers? Or perhaps charades? Oh, Shaun does love that game. Ha ha ha! Is...uh...is the lad with you?"

"Does it look like he's with me?" Nathan returned, more gruffly than he had intended. "They took him...the ones who killed Nora...they took Shaun!"

"It's worse than I thought," said Codsworth. "Hmm hmm! You're suffering from...hunger-induced paranoia. Not eating properly for 200 years will do that, I'm afraid. Ha ha."

"Wait, what?" Nathan asked. "Two hundred years?" Suddenly it all started to fall into place: the ice-boxes, what he had seen in the Vault terminals. They had been put in cyrogenic stasis. But why were they frozen? Why would V.A.U.L.T.-Tech freeze them inside the Vault? The terminals suggested merely some kind of scientific test. But his train of thought was interrupted by Codsworth's oddly cheerful interjection.

"A bit over 210, actually, sir," remarked the robot. "Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some minor dings to the old chronometer. That's means you're...two centuries late for dinner! Ha ha ha ha! Perhaps I can whip you up a sick? You must be famished!"

"The hell's wrong, Codsworth?" asked Nathan. "You're...you're acting strange."

The robot paused. What happened next was strange for Nathan. He never expected a robot to be anything more than a machine: perhaps with a built-in program that would give it a semblance of personality, but still a machine. If what had happened next had happened to a human, Nathan would have immediately said it was an emotional breakdown. The robot's photoreceptors sunk down on their stalks, the voice suddenly sounded desperate, and the bulbous body lurched unsteadily on its single thruster.

"Oh sir, it's been just horrible! Two centuries with no one to talk to, no one to serve! I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waxed, but nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood; nothing! And don't get me started about the futility of dusting a collapsed house. And the car! The car! How do you polish rust?!"

"Hey!" Nathan said, glad no one else was there to see him try to calm down a robot. "Stay with here, Codsy. It'll be alright. Can you tell me what happened?"

"I'm afraid I don't know anything, sir," Codsworth replied, his audio still sounding more emotional than one could believe a robot capable of. "The bombs came, and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for certain you and your family were...were...dead." One of the mechanical arms reached into a compartment between the bulbous main body and the arms, and presented a tiny object about 2.75 inches wide and 4.25 inches long.

"I did find this holotape," he said. "I believe mum was going to present it to you as...as a surprise. But then, well, everything 'happened!'"

Nathan took the holotape from Codsworth, as though he were being given a priceless jewel. Aside from his wedding band on his own hand, it was the only physical thing he had that reminded him of his lovely wife Nora.

"What's on it?" he asked, as he examined the holotape.

"I believe it's a private message for you, sir," Codsworth replied, already sounding less emotional than before. "My etiquette protocols would not permit me to play it for myself. Any standard holotape reading device should be able to play it back...oh! Like that Pip-Boy on your arm. That should work brilliantly." The voice module 'cleared' its voice and resumed its standard 'stiff upper lip' persona. "Now, enough feeling sorry for myself! Shall we search the neighborhood together? Mum and young Shaun may turn up yet."

"Fine," Nathan said, though he had no hope that they'd be here, so close to the Vault. "Let's look for them."

"Proud to serve, sir!" Codsworth announced, and at once began hovering down the street, three eyes looking this way and that all around him. Nathan left him wander off for a while, as he turned and made his way into his old house: he thought he had heard something.

The House of Tomorrow. It seemed like just yesterday that he had woken up, taken his morning shower, shaved the stubble off his face, and readied for the day. It was so hard to believe that over two hundred years had passed since then. He walked inside and saw what was left over. All the windows had been broken, several wall-shelves had fallen down, and the record-player hutch under the window-sill in the living room had collapsed. The kitchen was a mess, and there wasn't anything left on the counter-tops save for some small appliances and a copy of Grog'nak the Barbarian comic book: Jungle of the Bat-Babies. Nathan smiled grimly: he enjoyed reading the adventures of Grog'nak and collected them even into adulthood. He walked into the bathroom and up to the mirror. Short brown hair, blue eyes, clean-shaven: he hadn't changed a bit, though the mirror was stained and dusty. The blue and yellow Vault-suit that he was wearing didn't look any more flattering on him in the mirror than when he first got a look at it (though obviously Nora looked better in it). Then he heard it again, the nearby crackle of a voice. Turning around, he went back into the living room and saw the source of the sound: Bill Kenny, barely audible, crooning from the other end of a still-functioning radio sitting at the bottom of a collapsed shelf.

I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire
I just want to start a flame in your heart

Nathan shook his head. The Ink Spots were a favorite on the radio, even back in the 2050s, when he was a teenager. There was something disturbingly ironic about those words, warbling here at the end of everything. He walked over to the radio and started turning the dial. There was a lot of static, but eventually he found a spot where the sound came in clearly. Now, however, the song was over and a piano arpeggio was kicking up. Then he heard Skeeter Davis singing about a lost love.

Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know It's the End of the World?
'Cuz you don't love me anymore

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know It's the End of the World?
It ended when I lost your love

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was?
I can't understand, no I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does

Nathan closed his eyes and turned to walk away. There wasn't anything for him in what was left of his old house: whereas the Ink Spots seemed smugly ironic, Skeeter Davis spoke to his heart at that moment. He had no idea why he, Nathan Hall, had survived the Sino-American War of 2066: there were plenty of good young men, better men than him, in the 108th Infantry Company. They never got to go home to a beautiful wife and bouncing baby. And now here he was, in the year 2287 according to the clock on his Pip-Boy: once more the lone survivor. Why was he the one to make it when so many others didn't? He was the man of his new little household, and it had been his responsibility to protect Nora and Shaun. But now Nora was dead, Shaun was God knows where, and he...

At last, as Skeeter Davis concluded her sad little ballad, Nathan wiped his eyes. There was only one thing left for him to do: keep his promise. He reached into the pocket of his Vault-suit, brought out the 10mm handgun he had pulled out of the Vault overseer's desk, removed the clip, and counted how many bullets he had with him. A full cartridge of ten shots, but not nearly enough. He'd have to find more bullets, or another weapon. For now, however, he hoped that there was nothing else in the area of Sanctuary worse than the oversized cockroaches he found in the Vault.

Leaving his old house, he didn't have to go far before he heard the sound of Codsworth humming something that could be 'Rule Britannia', as well as his active thruster burning. Suddenly there was a loud buzzing sound coming from one of the nearby houses that was still standing. A large fly about the size of a watermelon came flying out of the house towards Nathan. It made a sickening sound and shot something towards Nathan. Instinctively, he moved his right hand up to cover his face and accidentally hit the 'Activate V.A.T.S.' button on his Pip-Boy. But at that moment, there was a more mechanical buzzing sound, like a saw, and then a sickening squelch and the large fly's body hit the ground.

Nathan moved his hand from his face and saw Codsworth hovering over the fly, a buzz-saw in one of his three arms: Mr. Handy indeed. But the Pip-Boy was still bleeping. Nathan looked at the screen was surprised at what he saw: a complete technical readout of Codsworth. General Atomics International Mr. Handy unit. Motor functions within acceptable limits. Coolant low. Oil in need of a change. Second arm servomotors sluggish in response. Atomic battery at 47%. Thruster exhaust port highest potential damage. Nathan clicked the button again and turned V.A.T.S. off, then followed Codsworth as he hovered into the house to examine it.

There wasn't anything in the house; bookcases were empty, trunks and night-stands were plundered, and the beds had collapsed. The only things of note in this house was a safe that hadn't been cracked and an unopened bottle of Nuka-Cola in the ice-box. Nathan smiled as he saw it; an old favorite from back in the day. From Christmastime to the Fourth of July, cartoon serials to pinup girl calendars, everyone knew about, or drank, these fizzy soft drinks in their rocket-shaped bottles. As for the safe, he remembered a trick that Nora had showed him back when they were dating, before he was deployed: all he'd need to find was a screwdriver and a bobby pin.

The next house he searched had nothing but some more overgrown flies. Another one, however, had something even more interesting. One of his neighbors had privately built an underground shelter of their own. Nothing too fancy like the Vault, just a little place underground with a bed and a few sundry items. What had happened to him was anyone's business, but there was a few things which Nathan might find useful. A duffle bag with some items: canned food, canned water, and a stack of 20 dollar bills. Nathan stuffed the Nuka-Cola bottle into the bag, then strapped it to his back and took it with him. When he emerged, he found Codsworth hovering near the entrance of a house: the way his cylindrical photoreceptors hung down seemed to paint a sad picture.

"Hey, Codsworth," Nathan greeted as he approached the robot.

"They're...they're really gone, aren't they?" the robot butler realized, his audio-output sounding rather grim.

"Dammit, I'm not giving up!" Nathan replied. "He's got to be out there, somewhere."

"Sir, if I may suggest, you could try Concord," offered Codsworth. "You know the way; across the Old North Bridge and right at the Red Rocket Truck Stop."

"There's still people in Concord?"

"Yes indeed, sir. Although, I must warn you, they're not exactly quite, shall we say, put together right? Tried to tear me down for scrap the last time I went over there."

"Thank you," he sighed.

"My pleasure, sir," Codsworth replied. "Chin up, now. You'll find young Shaun; I know you will. I shall remain here and secure the home-front."

With that, the robot hovered off back to the Hall's house and began patrolling around the perimeter of the house. Nathan, meanwhile, was on his way towards the road that led to the Old North Bridge. The bridge was still intact, though a portion had fallen off on the north-hand side. It wouldn't take him long to walk to Concord from here: only twenty-three minutes. The cars in the garages around Sanctuary still had their atomic batteries, but the rest of them were almost completely corroded with rust and unusable.

Over the bridge Nathan went, keeping to the southern side thereof. It held under his weight, and he made it to the other side. He made his way, looking this way and that toward the bare, naked trees. The Minuteman statue still stood where it had been moved, years before he was born, on the eastern side of the Concord River. Just up ahead, he could make out the red rocket sign of the gas station. The Red Rocket Truck Stop. He wondered why gas stations hadn't closed down once they started charging upwards of $50 a gallon. But there were still in his day some stations whose prices were upwards of $150 a gallon. Such had been the results of the Resource Wars of the early 2050s, and the years that followed.

Slowly he came upon the empty, desiccated remains of the Red Rocket Truck Stop, here at the corner of Great Meadows Road and Monument Street. The cars sat where they had been abandoned, empty and rusted. As he approached, there appeared something walking out of the service station: a German Shepherd. The dog came to a halt when it noticed the blue-clad stranger, and cocked its head to the right side as it examined the strange newcomer. Nathan clicked his tongue and whistled, and the dog slowly made its way over to him.

"Hey, boy," he said, a smile on his face. "Are you out here all by yourself?"

The dog slowly walked over to the human, his mouth hanging open and his tongue out in what could almost be considered a smile. Nathan knelt down and scratched the dog's ears. Somehow it felt very reassuring: his whole world had been turned upside down and something as simple as a dog seemed like a welcomed bit of normalcy in this strange new world.

Just then the dog spun around, got low to the ground, and began growling. Nathan didn't have to know too much about animals to know that something was wrong. He removed the pistol from the pocket of his Vault-suit and started looking around. From the dirt on the outskirts of the truck stop came three large mounds, like moving mole-hills, scurrying fast towards them. Nathan kept his gun on hand, waiting for an opening. Suddenly there were three bursts of dirt flung up into the air: three rat-like creatures roughly the same size as the dog appeared from the ground. They were an ugly fleshy pink color, naked save for a thin layer of dirt on their bare bodies, with four limbs, a tail, and four oversized pincers for a mouth. They didn't look friendly at all.

Nathan fired a shot at one, but it was too quick and the shot hit the dirt behind it. The dog leaped onto another one and dove its sharp teeth into the rat's neck. The rat nearest to Nathan leaped for him, but he kicked it away with his foot. The third rat attempted to save its fellow and attacked the dog. Nathan took aim, but couldn't get a decent show with the pistol. The first rat then came at Nathan again, leaping up and digging its jaws into his left arm. He pulled his arm back instinctively, and the rat's incisors skipped on the hardened plastic of the Pip-Boy, activating V.A.T.S. Nathan whipped the rat with his pistol, knocking it off his arm, and shot it in the head. He then turned back to the dog and the second rat, who were still locked in battle with each other.

There was a beeping sound on his wrist. He looked and saw the readout the V.A.T.S. gave on the creature: Heterocephalus glaber, naked mole-rat. Significant genetic alteration. Above average levels of gamma radiation. Limited eyesight. Head highest potential damage. Then it clicked in Nathan's head; the V.A.T.S. was a kind of targeting computer. He pointed the little green laser at the mole-rat, and it began beeping loudly. Taking aim at the dot at the end of the green beam, Nathan took his shot. The bullet flew through the air and penetrated the mole-rat's skull, dropping it immediately. The dog shook off its attacker, then turned to finish off the one it had bitten on the neck.

Nathan was surprised to see monstrous rats the size of dogs, but his shock was somewhat less than when he encountered the cockroaches. He had help from the dog, but also he had this targeting system built into his Pip-Boy that made firing much easier. Unfortunately he was down by three bullets, leaving only seven left. As he returned the gun to his pocket, the dog came up next to him, sat down, and looked up playfully at him with hits mouth open and tongue wagging.

"You did good, boy," he said as he caught his breath again.

The dog then made a playful sound, got back onto all fours, and walked into the service bay. Nathan followed after him, and saw that it was empty save for several work-benches and a welder who knows how old. The dog looked about, then took something in its jaws that looked like a cigarette box. Wagging his tail, he brought it over to Nathan and placed it at his feet. Kneeling down, Nathan picked up the box: it was a 10mm bullet box. Chuckling, he stuffed the box into his duffle bag and patted the dog's head.

"Alright!" he replied. "Do you wanna come with me?" The dog stepped forward and licked Nathan's cheek. He smiled and couldn't help himself from laughing.

So it was that Nathan Hall left the Red Rocket Truck Stop, heading south on the twenty-three minute walk to Concord, with him was this helpful stray dog. As they walked, he examined the Pip-Boy again. There were several buttons on it which did various things, one of which turned the personal vitals readout into a radar map of the location. A dial just above the V.A.T.S. button sent a crackle of static and warbled sounds from a distant radio signal. On the left side of the Pip-Boy was a holotape deck, which opened when he pressed it. He was about to close it, but then he recalled the holotape that Codsworth had given him. He sat down on the side of the road, opened his duffle bag, pulled out the holotape, and inserted it into the tape-deck. The soft, faint sound of machinery whirring could be heard, and then the tape began to play. There was a loud whine of feedback, then a voice began speaking on the other end of the recorded holotape that took Nathan's breath away.

It was Nora's.

She seemed to be fiddling with something, and he could hear the babbling and squeaking of Shaun on the tape as well. Nathan covered his mouth with his hand as he lost himself in the noises the two of them were making. The dog, noticing that the human had stopped, turned around and curiously peaked over Nathan's shoulder and perked up his ears to listen. After a moment or two of struggle, Nora began to speak directly to him, Nathan.

'Hi honey! Listen, I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a father you are...but we're going to anyway. You are kind, and loving...and funny! Ha ha, that's right.' Baby Shaun let out a laugh on the tape, causing Nathan's eyes to well up as he heard his son's little voice.

'And patient,' Nora's voice continued. 'So patience. The patience of the saints, as my mom used to say.' Nathan chuckled to hear her tone of voice as she reminisced on her mother. After a moment of levity, she continued. 'Look with Shaun, and us all being at home together...it's been an amazing year. But even so, I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure. Things we'll need to adjust to. You'll rejoin the civilian workforce, and once Shaun is old enough for a babysitter, I'll shake the dust off my law degree. But everything we do, no matter how hard...we do it for our family. Bye honey! We love you! Say goodbye to daddy, Shaun! Bye bye? Say bye bye?'

The rest of the tape ended with Nora trying desperately to get a several month old baby to say anything beyond a happy babble. Nathan listened and listened until the holotape clicked off. Just for the sheer joy of hearing their voices again, happy and optimistic. But then it dawned on him that he would never hear Nora's voice again: her life had been ended, her voice silenced forever the moment she refused to surrender their baby. She was only a distant memory. But Shaun was still alive, maybe. He had to find him, one way or another. Hearing the tape galvanized his resolve; he would find Shaun one way or another, if it was the last thing he did. Nothing would stand in his way.

He clicked the tape deck open, removed the holotape and put it back in the duffle bag. Then he zipped the bag back up, closed the tape deck, and found the dog's head nestled underneath his arm. He smiled, scratched the top of the dog's head, then got himself back up onto his feet. Together, Nathan and the dog began to make their way on foot southward, following Monument Street.

(AN: Hope you enjoyed this first dive into the world of Fallout, as well as a tiny hint to our hero's backstory.)

(Unlike Skyrim, which is a fantastical world where I can just use time dilation or some other CHIM crap to explain why it takes three to four days to walk from Windhelm to Markarth, the Boston Commonwealth in Fallout 4 is based on a real life place: so I've had to apply to quite a few more rules in this story than in my last one. Pretty much it's a 23 minute walk from the Old North Bridge [the real world location of Sanctuary Hills] to Concord: whose layout is immensely different in real life than in the game. I'm basing my Commonwealth on the real world version of Massachusetts [with some minor adjustments, obviously], to give it an added sense of realism. This also brought up the problem of "where is Vault 111 in relation to the real world?" The game puts it just a little hike from Sanctuary, but then has a river to cross when you're on your way back, which suggests that it's built on the eastern side of the Assabet [the Concord River is the one on Sanctuary's right side]. Also of note is that Fallout puts the Minuteman statue just outside of Sanctuary on the eastern side of the Concord River, whereas in real life, it's on the western side.)